Admission Statistics?

[JessicaLange]

I was wondering if anyone had found websites that say how many students programs generally take. I know that it varies from year to year and application pools are always changing, but Columbia says something like they get 700 applications for 8-10 positions. I haven't really seen that sort of information broadcasted by any other programs so I was wondering if anyone else had.

[DrNutty]

Wow they get a lot of applicants. Yeah, of course, it's a top school.

I have seen statistics like these at several of my schools, but they are much lower ranked than Columbia and I am also applying to a different kind of program than you obviously.

I have seen and heard from current doctoral students, that my type of schools get around 200 applications for a total spots of max. 5. One of my higher ranking schools probably gets a few more applicants and has a cohort of only 2-3 in 2017.

So yes I have also read on some websites that a school's admission percentage is below 5% of the applicant pool. Columbia's is extremely low it seems like.

 

[Caien]

This thread from a few years back:

 

[poliscar]

I honestly don't buy the 700 applications statistic from Columbia. For comparison, Stanford mentions that they get 300+ applications and admit 9, and Harvard lists a similar ratio of 300-350 applicants & 10-15 students admitted. The same goes for Brown, with stats of approximately 300 applications/18 admitted. Really, even if living in New York is a significant draw, I don't see how that would lead to a difference of 350-400 applicants, especially since the programs in question are all of comparative quality and reputation.

Part of me wonders whether Columbia is including MA applicants to inflate the overall number, but I can't say what the motives behind that could be. Something about their statistics seems pretty off though, regardless of motive. 

[Quickmick]

There is a lot to think about. While any way you slice it the numbers are uber competitive, there are some twists. Of the top 10 schools a fair number of the applicants are applying to the same programs. So say for 10 schools at 200 apps each 100 are overlap, and 100 are discrete/per. That makes 1100, and say 1/3 are long reach apps of the 1000. so 750 qualified apps for say 75-100 spots (across subfileds). So maybe 10%? Just pointing out that it might not be as dire as the admission stats suggest prima facie. Though if your field is crowded (or was oversubscribed last year) you might just be out of luck.

There is obviously more going on, but I just wanted to bring up the overlap thing...

good luck everyone!

hmmm... maybe the overlap is smaller? I dont know...just waiting around for news.   : o  P

                                                                                                                                   

Edited January 8, 2017 by Quickmick

[Warelin]

1 hour ago, poliscar said:

I honestly don't buy the 700 applications statistic from Columbia. For comparison, Stanford mentions that they get 300+ applications and admit 9, and Harvard lists a similar ratio of 300-350 applicants & 10-15 students admitted. The same goes for Brown, with stats of approximately 300 applications/18 admitted. Really, even if living in New York is a significant draw, I don't see how that would lead to a difference of 350-400 applicants, especially since the programs in question are all of comparative quality and reputation.

Part of me wonders whether Columbia is including MA applicants to inflate the overall number, but I can't say what the motives behind that could be. Something about their statistics seems pretty off though, regardless of motive. 

We will never know the true meanings of questions.

On a side note: Comparing Providence (Brown) or Cambridge (Harvard) to New York City might not be the way to look at it. Chicago might be a bit easier to compare to. According to the University of Chicago, "In recent years, we have received around 600 applications a year and have admitted anywhere from 2% to 5% of those applicants into our PhD program." I think another thread mentioned that a school in Philadelphia (UPenn) received more than 700 applications one year.

I think what makes UPenn and Columbia receive more applications than most schools are they have several groups of people applying to them:
1)People only applying to top 10/20 programs
2) People only applying to ivy league colleges
3) People applying to live in major cities
4) People applying to live in world-class cities
5) People unaware that UPenn and Columbia are ivy-league colleges.

There are indeed some people who believe that UPenn is just a state school and have never heard of Columbia since it isn't Harvard/Yale/Princeton. I think HYP may actually receive less applications because people are intimidated by them.

[ExponentialDecay]

Eh, you have to cull those numbers significantly for the applicants who are underqualified or just plain loopy, which, at 700 applicants, is probably 2/3 of that pool. The number of serious and actually admissible applicants is in comparison most likely very small.

Edited January 8, 2017 by ExponentialDecay

[Dr. Old Bill]

1 hour ago, ExponentialDecay said:

Eh, you have to cull those numbers significantly for the applicants who are underqualified or just plain loopy, which, at 700 applicants, is probably 2/3 of that pool. The number of serious and actually admissible applicants is in comparison most likely very small.

Yes, I have heard this several times -- that a large proportion of applicants simply miss the boat entirely.

Incidentally, I was recently sent an email in error from one of the programs I applied to. The body of the email referred me to an attachment, which was addressed to someone else (just their name), and listed all the components of the application that were missing. Among those were letters of recommendation, GRE scores, undergraduate transcript, and graduate transcript -- this is from two weeks after the application date for this particular program. I'd love to know just how many applications are "dashed off" or otherwise incomplete. On the latter front, even for the most meticulous among us, it's easy to accidentally miss some element of an application. That usually won't mean immediate disqualification...but it can.

Ultimately, the numbers remain daunting, but it's safe to say that the percentages for appropriate applicants is probably in the double digits for most programs. It's also worth pointing out that if you look at past seasons of Grad Cafe posts, relatively few members get shut out. That might be too small of a sample size to be meaningful, but it suggests that informed applicants don't do as poorly as the raw numbers might otherwise indicate. This shouldn't get anyone's hopes up, of course, but it's worth considering.

[Quickmick]

35 minutes ago, Wyatt's Terps said:

 This shouldn't get anyone's hopes up, of course, but it's worth considering.

Too late, hopes are up.

[steve3020]

13 hours ago, Warelin said:

I think HYP may actually receive less applications because people are intimidated by them.

I think you have a point, Warelin. In my case, I've never lived or been to the US so all the universities were, at least at first, recognisable more or less only through their brands. I'm not sure if I didn't apply to these three places because I was intimidated or because I already found more than many places in the US that I can apply to, but surely they weren't the first places I started looking into. The situation seems not very different over the Atlantic - my girlfriend went to a post-1992 university (a term in the UK referring to the third-tier universities, after Oxbridge and Red Brick unis..) and she didn't dare to apply to Cambridge for masters although that was where her heart was. So I wonder how competitive it actually is to get into HYP in my field (comparative literature). I remember there was someone who got into Harvard and Yale but rejected by NYU (or CUNY, I'm not too sure). 

[steve3020]

3 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

Eh, you have to cull those numbers significantly for the applicants who are underqualified or just plain loopy, which, at 700 applicants, is probably 2/3 of that pool. The number of serious and actually admissible applicants is in comparison most likely very small.

Do you think it is like that with the top universities that receive much fewer applications, around 100-200? 

[Warelin]

1 hour ago, steve3020 said:

I think you have a point, Warelin. In my case, I've never lived or been to the US so all the universities were, at least at first, recognisable more or less only through their brands. I'm not sure if I didn't apply to these three places because I was intimidated or because I already found more than many places in the US that I can apply to, but surely they weren't the first places I started looking into. The situation seems not very different over the Atlantic - my girlfriend went to a post-1992 university (a term in the UK referring to the third-tier universities, after Oxbridge and Red Brick unis..) and she didn't dare to apply to Cambridge for masters although that was where her heart was. So I wonder how competitive it actually is to get into HYP in my field (comparative literature). I remember there was someone who got into Harvard and Yale but rejected by NYU (or CUNY, I'm not too sure). 

I know in general that Comp Lit programs tend to receive fewer applications than English programs. However, I think the percentage accepted is within a few percentage points at each school. I'd also imagine to some extent that despite Comp Lit programs having a smaller applicant pool that their applicants have a more "serious" interest and aren't applying because they want to "read literature for 5 years." I'm not sure how many people apply in English for that reason but I remember a program mentioning it as a reason to not apply so I wonder how big of a problem it is.

When Princeton released their numbers a few years ago, I think their number of applicants for English was around 350.

On another note, the Graduate School at Northwestern does keep a record of their applicants:
For Comp Lit, they received 102 applications last cycle and accepted 13. This is a 13 percent acceptance rate.
For English, they received 208 applications last cycle and accepted 16. This is a 8 percent acceptance rate.

Duke's Literature Program received 152 applications last cycle; 12 were accepted. That's a 8 percent acceptance rate
Duke's English Program received 241 applications last cycle; 15 were accepted. That's a 6 percent acceptance rate.

It's also important to realize though that each application will be different and that some schools will care about different things differently. Some schools may consider teaching experience or tutoring experience; others won't. Some will like you to have conference experience; others might prefer to do all your training themselves. Also, having an interest in say, Ecocritism, will do you no good if there's nobody there with an interest in Ecocritism.
 

[steve3020]

1 hour ago, Warelin said:

I'd also imagine to some extent that despite Comp Lit programs having a smaller applicant pool that their applicants have a more "serious" interest and aren't applying because they want to "read literature for 5 years." I'm not sure how many people apply in English for that reason but I remember a program mentioning it as a reason to not apply so I wonder how big of a problem it is.
 

A lot of complit programmes are thinly disguised cultural theory, Marxist or otherwise, courses, so many people seem to come with interests in theory as well as literature as you can tell from dissertations completed. I'm not sure if this qualifies them as more 'serious', though, since people might simply want to 'read theory' for 5 years.  

[Glasperlenspieler]

34 minutes ago, steve3020 said:

A lot of complit programmes are thinly disguised cultural theory, Marxist or otherwise, courses, so many people seem to come with interests in theory as well as literature as you can tell from dissertations completed. I'm not sure if this qualifies them as more 'serious', though, since people might simply want to 'read theory' for 5 years.  

I think it's the language requirements that scare off a lot of applicants to comparative literature programs. Whether or not the students have a more "serious" interest in literature, there are certainly fewer students who are willing to acquire full proficiency in one foreign language and at least a solid reading ability in one or two more. So for that reason, the applicant pool is going to be naturally more self-selecting. 

[Yanaka]

6 hours ago, Quickmick said:

Too late, hopes are up.

Exactly. Thanks, @Wyatt's Terps.

[JessicaLange]

1 hour ago, Glasperlenspieler said:

I think it's the language requirements that scare off a lot of applicants to comparative literature programs. Whether or not the students have a more "serious" interest in literature, there are certainly fewer students who are willing to acquire full proficiency in one foreign language and at least a solid reading ability in one or two more. So for that reason, the applicant pool is going to be naturally more self-selecting. 

Also, it's just sort of a fact that most Comp lit programs are shrinking. My school, if I remember correctly has fewer than 50 undergraduate comp lit majors. Our English program is also shrinking, but it's still somewhere around 400 majors. If there is not a lot of interest in it for undergraduates, then I think it's fair to say that people won't be as interested in graduate study. Not to mention, if the school does not have many majors, then they will let go of faculty. The job market is incredibly uncertain for comp lit graduate students.

[ExponentialDecay]

5 hours ago, steve3020 said:

A lot of complit programmes are thinly disguised cultural theory, Marxist or otherwise, courses, so many people seem to come with interests in theory as well as literature as you can tell from dissertations completed. I'm not sure if this qualifies them as more 'serious', though, since people might simply want to 'read theory' for 5 years.  

Where did you get that impression?

Complit is by nature more interdisciplinary than English, so they do attract students with broader interests, but I haven't seen a program that doesn't *require* its students to do research in two primary languages (ie literatures). The fact that complit programs offer more theory courses rarely reflects on the dissertations of the actual students that they release. National literature department dissertations are these days just as theory-heavy as complit dissertations. If a person enters any graduate literature program without interest in theory, people will look at them askance.

As regards your question to me, 100-200 looks about like the number of the real competition, though that depends on how you define competitive. That's likely the number of people who submit all the required materials, and all of those materials are more or less coherent and polished, but the number of people that a department can actually see paying 100k in just salary for? Probably like the results of a typical faculty search, scaled appropriately: 10-20.

[Yanaka]

Except for Cornell, where it's 3

[Warelin]

On 1/9/2017 at 6:49 AM, Yanaka said:

Except for Cornell, where it's 3

It's hard to tell if you're serious or not but misinformation can be dangerous.

If you go to: http://gradschool.cornell.edu/academics/field-metrics

Then click: "Selectivity and Yield Over 5 years", you'll be guided to Cornell's admission stats. If you select "Comparative Literature", you'll see that SU/FA 2015 saw a total of 7 out of 71 applicants get admitted. Of the seven, 3 chose to enroll. I think one of the most important things to realize is that there is a difference between the numbers of applicants accepted and the number of applicants matriculated. While the matriculation seems low, it's important to remember that there may have been a significant overlap between Cornell and students that chose to enroll in another "top-school". While we don't have data from every school, I don't think there is a school that has 100 percent of its acceptances take up their offer 100 percent of the time.

[ExponentialDecay]

Since when is Cornell a top school for comp lit?

[Warelin]

8 minutes ago, ExponentialDecay said:

Since when is Cornell a top school for comp lit?

I think a fair amount of people will apply to Cornell for no other reason that it is part of the Ivy League. I know a fair amount of people who have applied to programs using undergraduate "prestige" as a determining factor.

[poliscar]

4 hours ago, Warelin said:

It's hard to tell if you're serious or not but misinformation can be dangerous.

If you go to: http://gradschool.cornell.edu/academics/field-metrics

Then click: "Selectivity and Yield Over 5 years", you'll be guided to Cornell's admission stats. If you select "Comparative Literature", you'll see that SU/FA 2015 saw a total of 7 out of 71 applicants get admitted. Of the seven, 3 chose to enroll. I think one of the most important things to realize is that there is a difference between the numbers of applicants accepted and the number of applicants matriculated. While the matriculation seems low, it's important to remember that there may have been a significant overlap between Cornell and students that chose to enroll in another "top-school". While we don't have data from every school, I don't think there is a school that has 100 percent of its acceptances take up their offer 100 percent of the time.

I believe Yanaka was referring to the number of languages required! 

Re. Cornell being a top program in Comparative Literature—uh, yeah, it definitely is, just look at the faculty. Jonathan Culler, Bruno Bosteels, Naoki Sakai, Cathy Caruth, etc... It's definitely top-notch, especially for certain theoretical strands. 

[Yanaka]

I was being serious and humorous at the same time. I thought I had read 3/4 somewhere on the school's website.  

Fyi I'm not applying to schools only for prestige... thanks @poliscar for your message!

Edited January 12, 2017 by Yanaka

[Dr. Old Bill]

7 hours ago, Warelin said:

While we don't have data from every school, I don't think there is a school that has 100 percent of its acceptances take up their offer 100 percent of the time.

...University of Phoenix?

[Warelin]

31 minutes ago, Yanaka said:

I was being serious and humorous at the same time. I thought I had read 3/4 somewhere on the school's website.  

Fyi I'm not applying to schools only for prestige... thanks @poliscar for your message!

I think a lot of schools are "sneaky" in the ways they present information at times. (Some schools say how big their incoming classes are but never mention how many people they accepted. My prestige comment wasn't directed towards you; my apologies if it came off that way. However, it's a phenomenon I've noticed from people who pay much less attention to finding their proper fit within a school. I've had many conversations with friends that have applied to places which has none of their specific interests,

 

15 minutes ago, Wyatt's Terps said:

...University of Phoenix?

I once had an Uber driver who dropped out of UPenn due to expenses and was ecstatic about their acceptance and degree from University of Pheonix. I was unsure of how to react.